


Held

by isaac richard (MoastedRarshmallow)



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Codependency, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Insomnia, Not Shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 15:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoastedRarshmallow/pseuds/isaac%20richard
Summary: Mr. Robot helps Elliot sleep.





	Held

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't really shippy, more of a parent/child relationship. elliot just needs some love sometimes ;( 
> 
> anyway enjoy! comments and kudos make me squeal like that pig in stephen king's misery

 “I just…” Elliot looks down at his hands. He holds them out to Mr. Robot, a sign of his surrender.

 “I just need to sleep.”

 There’s no hostility in his eyes when Mr. Robot searches them, regarding him with a cigarette still held to his lips. Elliot had kept Mr. Robot for a long time, hidden in the depths of his mind after his father died, but never has he been so voluntarily vulnerable. It’s a strange thing, strange in how obviously its manifested itself – this longing that radiates from Elliot.

 What’s a delusion to do?

 It could easily be a trick, but between the two of them, it wasn’t Elliot that manipulated people based on emotions. Elliot was calculated in his destruction. He was a hacker, not a politician. Robot existed, in part, so Elliot didn’t have to be the wordsmith.  

 “Do you now?” Robot asks, sarcasm thick on his words. He stubs his cigarette, which disappears, having never really been there in the first place. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks down at Elliot, a power stance with little power in it.

 “Yes,” Elliot says. He looks close to tears. It tugs at Mr. Robot’s heartstrings – the goddamn part of him that housed Elliot’s memories of Edward Alderson.

 He wasn’t completely Elliot’s father. Some of him was Elliot, and some of him was purely Robot, an imagined source of gumption Elliot’s mind needed and couldn’t get on its own. Mr. Robot knows all this, and he’s made his peace with his existence.

 Elliot, however, has not.

 Elliot puts his head in his hands, sitting with his knees brought up to his chest. He’s taken that position a million times, but never when he thought Mr. Robot was watching. He had really been pushed towards the edge, lately, Robot realizes.

 The aftermath of 5/9, the thousands of lives lost… Robot could handle it with grace and ease, but it wasn’t the same for Elliot. He had a conscience, fear, a drive to keep other people besides himself afloat. It was one of the weaknesses Mr. Robot didn’t possess – all he wanted was to keep Elliot alive, to achieve the goals Elliot wanted but didn’t have the assets to achieve on his own. He didn’t care about what he left in his wake.

 “Hey,” Mr. Robot murmurs. He doesn’t know if it sounds soothing or not.

  Elliot looks up, his large, sunken, darkly circled eyes giving him the look of a ghostly child. He’s skinnier than he should be, too – Mr. Robot makes a mental note to stuff their face the next time he has the chance. Elliot doesn’t take care of himself; the frayed lines of his mental state should say that much.

 He hasn’t taken care of himself since he and Darlene were still kids, and he did it for her. He didn’t think he deserved to do anything for himself.  

 But now he was asking, pleading, for the least selfish thing in the world. Who was Mr. Robot to deny him? If he were to look at it from the most logical side of things, it meant that he himself wanted it, too.

 “Hey, c’mere,” Mr. Robot says. He sits down close enough to Elliot that their knees are knocking together. Elliot sighs brokenly, curling against Robot’s side; Mr. Robot can feel both the relief and bite of shame Elliot feels.

 Mr. Robot wraps his arms around Elliot’s shoulders and pulls him close, close enough he can feel the beat of their shared heart. Elliot begins to cry quietly, encircling Robot’s waist and gripping the sides of his jacket tightly, afraid Robot would just up and disappear, refuse to let Elliot see him like he had done in the past. Mr. Robot grimaces to himself – Elliot was the petulant child, not him.

 “I’m not going anywhere,” Mr. Robot promises softly.

 Elliot nods into the crook of Robot’s neck, though his mind screams unconvinced. Robot rocks them back and forth, his hand in Elliot’s hair, gently pushing back the curls with the pad of his thumb. He can feel the bubble of humiliation grow in Elliot’s chest, and it hurts him. Where was the wrongness in needing a little help sometimes?

 “Enough of that shit, kid,” he says in a whisper. “You’re alright.”

  Elliot mumbles something that sounds like _sorry._ Mr. Robot shakes his head but doesn’t bother to tell Elliot not to be. He knows by now that Elliot can feel the sentiment as it passes through the both of them, even stronger since they were so close, both in proximity and in mental state. Their mind quiets as Elliot does, the background reverberations of thoughts, whirring like an idle computer, is all that’s left.

 Elliot compared himself to a terminal often in his mind; his brain the computer, his emotions the operating system and the things that happen to him the viruses and programs. Mr. Robot thought it was a stupid analogy, seeing as Elliot and all human beings could do so much more than a computer, but he sees it now. As he runs the program comfort, Elliot’s system could settle.

 Not that it was anywhere in the ballpark of that simple. Robot couldn’t forget that he was essentially an amalgam of parts that Elliot needed to maintain his sanity, that he was essentially cradling the outward version of himself. There was no use in thinking about it that way now, though. Elliot could feel it, and it made him stir.

 Robot pulls Elliot out of his comfortable half-sleep, all nestled in his arms. Elliot mutters a few curses, no venom behind them, and lets Mr. Robot hook his arm around his waist and gently guide him backwards into the flimsy bed behind them. Robot pulls the sheets up around them, Elliot’s head on his chest.

It was the definition of unsimple, this thing they were doing, but it didn’t matter. Elliot’s breathing evened, slow and restful, his fist lightly grasping the fabric of Robot’s shirt, anchoring them together.

 

They slept.


End file.
